Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe 'SMART CARDS' A simplified approach to embedding small computer chips into identity cards, in order to hold fingerprints and other data, could be a way to meet heightened security in the post-Sept. 11 world without raising privacy worries, a privacy advocate said Monday. Advertisement Most proposals raised recently involve connecting the chip-containing "smart cards" with a central database of biometric information -- such as fingerprints and retinal or face scans. This concentration of data has raised red flags in the privacy world, since a security breach would compromise hundreds or thousands of individuals' IDs, Ari Schwartz, an analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, told UPI. At the recent Biometric Consortium Conference in Arlington, Va., two companies discussed a simpler way of utilizing fingerprint information. Baltimore-based Biometric Associates and Global Biometric in Tampa, Fla., have similar plans to use the smart card itself to hold the fingerprint data. People would get the cards by proving their identity at a trusted agent, such as a bank or government agency, which would provide only the person's name to the companies. The smart card would store at least one fingerprint onboard. When the person went through a security checkpoint, the card's fingerprint data would confirm identity, and the database would confirm the person had indeed been issued the card. The ID would be worthless to anyone but the owner, and replacing a lost card would involve repeating the verification process. Advertisement Doug Kozlay, president of Biometric Associates, said the cards would safeguard the data with encryption almost 10 times stronger than the best system available on the Web. The approach would also simplify deployment and cost issues by keeping the biometric system confined to a mass-produced card, he said in a presentation. The idea of limiting the biometric information to the card might also ease worries about misuse of such a powerful ID system, Schwartz said. "People could feel more comfortable that this wouldn't be used for some sort of greater governmental control than a centralized database would," he said. "You can't really use it beyond some small set of original purposes." (Thanks to Scott R. Burnell, UPI Science News) COMPUTER NEWS IBM Corp. on Monday unveiled a high-speed integrated semiconductor circuit. The semiconductor circuit, which IBM dubbed the "world's fastest," is based on silicon germanium -- SiGe -- a material that uses a layer of germanium to achieve high speed while taking advantage of the low cost and workability of silicon. IBM -- which said the technology is already widely used in both high-speed wired and low-cost wireless equipment -- expects the chip to be available later this year. The new chip is aimed at makers of fiber-optic switches and other networking devices. It runs at more than 110 gigahertz, which means it turns on and off more than 100 billion times a second. IBM said the chip processes an electrical signal in 4.3 trillionths of second. Advertisement Sierra Monolithics Inc., a Redondo Beach, Calif., maker of telecommunications components, has been working with IBM on SiGe integrated circuit designs for various communications applications since 1996 and will be one of the first companies to design circuits based on IBM's new technology. One of the most important features of the new chip is that it uses much less power at slightly slower speeds.
